Saturday, February 14, 2015

State officials will return in March to evaluate progress at Bryan Station High School

Every day, Robin Steiner observes classes at Lexington's
Bryan Station High School and uses what she sees to help students learn.

Steiner
is a liaison between Fayette County Public Schools and Bryan Station
High School, the district's only "priority school" — the state's label
for persistent, low-achieving schools. Her job is to make improvements
in technology and student engagement.

Bryan Station High School Principal Mike Henderson

District leaders brought her
in after state education officials determined last spring that the
district wasn't doing enough to help the school improve academically.
Test data show that the school is headed in the right direction, but a
team from the state will return in March to decide, again, whether the
district is doing enough for Bryan Station.

Vicki Ritchie, Fayette
schools' director of school improvement and innovation, said the
district has done a lot for the high school in north Lexington in the
past several months.

The school has received more funding,
including a $50,000 grant from the district to help students who need
intervention, Ritchie said. More money for Bryan Station High will be
discussed for the 2015-16 budget, she said.

Teachers at Bryan Station are getting more training, and there is more collaboration with the middle schools.

Ritchie,
principal Mike Henderson, Steiner and other school officials attend a
leadership training program two days a month at Eastern Kentucky
University. Topics include math education, literacy strategies and
strategic thinking.

At the school itself, the district brought in a
special education team, and the district's technology department
employees show teachers and others how to use technology in the
classroom. A family and community liaison is working to involve more
families. Pupil personnel officials work with students who have
attendance problems. There are problem-solving sessions at the school as
needed, Ritchie said.

The school is getting higher marks in the state's accountability system.

"Bryan
Station has made progress over the past two years. The school's overall
score has increased from 47.7 to 62.6, which indicates positive
growth," said associate commissioner Kelly Foster. "There is still work
to be done. But the school's leadership, teachers, staff and students
have been working hard to move the school in the right direction."

Since
fall 2011, state education officials have classified Bryan Station as a
persistently low-achieving school, one of more than 30 priority schools
that hadn't met adequate measures of success.

In a report that
Foster presented to the state school board on Feb. 4, Bryan Station was
among 28 priority high schools that showed a big gain — more than 20
percentage points — in students graduating from college or being
career-ready over the past four years. Bryan Station was among 12
priority schools that had double-digit gains in the percentage of
students meeting the ACT math benchmark from 2010 to 2014. And the
school has closed student achievement gaps over the past three years.

But
other areas need improvement. The school didn't meet its college and
career readiness target, and its graduation rate is below the state
average of 88 percent.

"We need to make sure every kid grows," said Henderson, the principal.

He
described "a climate change" at the school: Students know that they
have to meet certain benchmarks, and they're looking past senior year to
college, technical school and careers.

"It's not just good enough to graduate from high school anymore," he said.

Bryan
Station High could be released from priority status in 2015-16, pending
state assessment data to be released in the fall. Students have to meet
certain goals, Foster said, but "they are on track at this point, based
on the last two years of data.''

Henderson said the district's support is "a lot more in tune with what our needs are."

Those needs are many. Ritchie said 61 percent of Bryan Station's students are eligible for free and reduced-priced lunches.

Bryan Station parent Christin Helmuth said the district has not done enough for the school.

"It
is nearly impossible to cultivate school pride and high expectations
when the entire community has devalued the school," she said.

"This
is particularly tragic given the fact that the results of most
high-stakes standardized tests factored into our school accountability
score demonstrate that BSHS actually hosts" more low-income, minority
and disabled kids scoring proficient and distinguished than the other
high schools on those tests, Helmuth said. Those numbers appear less
significant when averaged, she said.

"Just watch one redistricting
committee meeting to see what I am talking about," Helmuth said. The
silence of district officials reinforces perception that high-poverty
schools with low test scores are inferior, she said.

According
to data on the school's "report card," she said, the school employs the
highest numbers of inexperienced teachers, teachers without advanced
degrees and teachers with provisional certificates, and the fewest
board-certified teachers. All teachers are paid according to their
experience and education, she said.

She said the district could
compensate for those discrepancies by appealing to the state to create a
more equitable fund-distribution process or by prioritizing funds.

Redistricting
committee member Astarre Gudino said the committee has not yet done
enough for Bryan Station. Gudino, who represents the Lexington Fayette
Human Rights Commission, said that by moving some neighborhoods from
Bryan Station to a planned new high school, "we've taken some of the
diversity out of Bryan Station."

She said she hopes the committee
could make recommendations to make Bryan Station "a destination school,"
giving it programs that make people want to be there.

The state's
report last spring said that Bryan Station has a "variety of unique and
exciting" programs — including Spanish Immersion, the Information
Technology Academy, and the Station ARTS magnet program — that attract
students from across the district, adding to the school's diversity,
public reputation and overall performance.

Redistricting committee
chairman Alan Stein said the group will recommend to the school board
that Bryan Station become a magnet school for an information technology
academy.

Helping any school in Fayette County that has challenges "has to be a team effort," Ritchie said.

District
officials, school staff and people in the community all have to be on
the same page, she said, to help students "make the gains and reach the
goals that they've set."

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

There is only so much a school can do. With that said, I have found that proposing that there is a new mindset in a high school about achievement and post graduate opportunities is often more the effort, perception and agenda of the adult leaders than it is a shift in teenager students' values and behaviors. The programs all sound interesting but what percentage of the student population actually participate in them, much less are eligible to participate in them when the emphasis is assessment score content (not Spanish, Tech or Arts).

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